Gragas Guide & Builds

Gragas Skills

(Innate): Gragas takes a drink from his cask every time he uses an ability, restoring 2% of his maximum health over 4 seconds.

Tips :

Some regeneration in the lane phase.

A fairly useless passive in teamfights
Doing a 2nd spell before the end of the 4 seconds cooldown won't stack, it just resets the effect for 4 more seconds.

The passive lets Gragas have a bit of sustain during the game, this represents about 12 to 15 life points in the early game when he does an ability.

In early, unless you want to make a kill or otherwise survive, take care not to spam your spells too much to benefit from the cooldown as much as possible.

Barrel Roll (Q)

(Active): Gragas rolls his cask to a location, which can be activated again to explode or will explode on its own after 5 seconds. Enemies struck by the blast have their attack speed reduced for 3 seconds.

Range to center of AoE: 1100

Diameter of AoE: 700

Tips :

Gragas throws a barrel into the targeted zone.

A barrel with a detonator

Harass and push
The spell's cooldown starts when you throw the barrel, not when it explodes. This makes it possible with the spell's cooldown to send out a second barrel when the first explodes.

The barrels can touch the melee and distance minions once they have taken their position, if you place it well. However you will need AP to be able to "one shot" the distance minions with a single barrel, and even more for the melees. This lets you quickly push the lane to move, do the liches or others.

The barrel also lets you zone an opponent when he has to approach the minions, be careful not to waste your barrels in the early when you don't have a lot of mana.

I recommend that you move closer to your opponent because it will be more difficult to hit him with your barrel from further away, however you should keep some distance to avoid your opponent's harass. It is up to you to find the right distance at which you are at ease. If you start to farm with the barrel in early you will quickly be short of mana, and you will quickly find yourself in difficulty in the lane. You should use it to harass and try not to miss with it too often in the early.

Also note that it is not possible to explode the barrel while it is moving before it arrives at the targeted area.

Cost: 80 / 90 / 100 / 110 / 120 mana

Cooldown: 11 / 10 / 9 / 8 / 7 seconds upon casting

Magic Damage: 85 / 135 / 185 / 235 / 285 (+0.9 per ability power)

Attack Speed Reduction: 20% / 25% / 30% / 35% / 40%

Drunken Rage (W)

(Active): Gragas guzzles down brew from his cask, channeling for 1 second. He gains mana while channeling, and becomes empowered after finishing, increasing attack damage, and reducing damage taken for 20 seconds.

No cost

Cooldown: 25 seconds

Tips :

Gragas starts to drink from his barrel.

A buff

Some mana, regeneration, tanking and physical damage, what more could you want?
It is possible to interrupt the channeling to be able to move, this would let you recover half of the mana and activate your passive. However you will not have the bonus from the end of the spell's channeling.

This buff is very useful to activate your passive, to return your mana in early and to give you the damage and resistance bonus. This will compensate for the fact that you are a melee mage in the lane phase.

Useful in mid/late game because it lets Gragas be more tanky for an AP carry. The bonus lasts 20 seconds, which is relatively long for a spell that doesn't have a cost and has a cooldown of 25 seconds without CDR.

Always try to have the bonus from Drunken Rage before getting into a fight, this could save your life.

If Gragas manages to drink for 1 second, he recoveres the bonus that is shown by the light.

Mana Restored: 30 / 45 / 60 / 75 / 90

Bonus Attack Damage: 30 / 40 / 50 / 60 / 70

Damage Reduction: 10 / 12 / 14 / 16 / 18 %

Body Slam (E)

(Active): Gragas charges forward, colliding with the first enemy unit he hits, dealing magic damage to enemies in the area. Damage is split amongst targets hit. Units hit by Body Slam are slowed by 35% for 2.5 seconds.

Cost: 75 mana

Cooldown: 7 seconds

Range: 600

Charge Speed: 900

Tips :

Gragas charges at his target.

Gragas' dash!

Mobile for a Fat American!
Take care not to be touched by the minions or the monsters when you try to kill an opponent so that you can deal mximum damage.

This spell gives Gragas a lot of mobility, take care not to hit an opponent when you are using it to escape from a gank.

This spell crosses walls, even thick one, and it lets you gank by dodging wards on the map.

If you cast your barrel during Body Slam, the barrel is cast from the inital position of Body Slam.

Be careful not to use it in teamfights on too many targets because it will only do a little damage and you will be exposed to a retaliation, you are not a tank! However, if a target is isolated then the damage is high and will let you "one shot" a careless opponent with the help of your other spells.

(Active): Gragas throws his cask to a location, which explodes on impact, dealing magic damage to enemy units in the area and knocking them back.

Range to Center: 1050

Diameter of AoE: 800

Sight Diameter: 1000

Max. knockback distance: 600

Tips :

Gragas casts his barrel, on impact with the ground it throws back his opponents.

The ultimat that can put your opponents in some very tricky situations

A very multi-purpose ultimate, both in offense and defence.
It is a very good ultimate that can be used many ways and situations: to disengage from a fight, to engage by isolating a carry from his team, to save an ally, to break a channeled spell like Warwick's ultimate, or to burst from far away and break up the positioning of the whole of the enemy team.

The movement speed of the ultimate is higher than that of Barrel Roll (Q), so take care to send the barrel before the ultimate if you want to burst your opponents who have regrouped in a teamfight, or if you want to kill an opponent with your two spells.

The ultimate is easy to place because of your mobility, its range and its speed. This means the ultimate can be used to kill an opponent with little HP who mistakenly thinks he is safe.

This spell has a very weak cooldown, especially in the late game, with a CD reduction you can go down to 36 seconds of cooldown, which is really very short for such a powerful ultimate.

Don't hesitate to try and engage with your ultimate in the mid/late game, since the cooldown is weak you can try and engage with a weak carry from the enemy team.

Cost: 100 / 125 / 150 mana

Cooldown: 100 / 90 / 80 seconds

Magic Damage: 200 / 325 / 450 (+1.0 per ability power)

Pros

Very good pusher
One of the best mobilities in the gameDifficult to gank because of his escape and his ultimate
Powerful in 1 v 1
Possibile to change the game thanks to a good ultimate
A powerful hard carry
Works very will with gankers
Quite powerful for the level 1 teamfights
Excellent engage
Tanky for an AP carry
Possibility to move quickly by dodging wardsEasy to do the wraiths
Possibility of farming very quickly while being present on the map

Cons

Only skillshots, the requires training
Not obvious to master, he is more complicated than most AP carry
Melee, so needs an aggressive style of play in the lane phase
In the early it is important to manage the distance between him and an opponent who is a long range as he will make the most of it to harass you if you play too passively and don't dominateAvoid farming with the barrels early in the lane phase
Manavorous in earlygame so it is recommended to farm in auto-attack
Missing your spells in the early could cost you